So can no fountain both yield salt water and fresh

The best texts omit so can no fountain, and the and between salt and fresh. Thus the text reads, οὔτε ἁλυκὸν γλυκὺ ποιῆσαι ὕδωρ. Render, as Rev., neither can salt water yield sweet. Another of James' local allusions, salt waters. The Great Salt Sea was but sixteen miles from Jerusalem. Its shores were lined with salt-pits, to be filled when the spring freshets should raise the waters of the lake. A salt marsh also terminated the valley through which the Jordan flows from the Lake of Tiberius to the Dead Sea, and the adjoining plain was covered with salt streams and brackish springs. Warm springs impregnated with sulphur abound in the volcanic valley of the Jordan. Ἁλυκὸν, salt, occurs only here in the New Testament.

James 3:12 Parallel Commentaries

the fig tree.

Isaiah 5:2-4 And he fenced it, and gathered out the stones thereof, and planted it with the choicest vine, and built a tower in the middle of it...

Jeremiah 2:21 Yet I had planted you a noble vine, wholly a right seed: how then are you turned into the degenerate plant of a strange vine to me?

Matthew 7:16-20 You shall know them by their fruits. Do men gather grapes of thorns, or figs of thistles...

Matthew 12:33 Either make the tree good, and his fruit good; or else make the tree corrupt, and his fruit corrupt...

Luke 6:43,44 For a good tree brings not forth corrupt fruit; neither does a corrupt tree bring forth good fruit...

Romans 11:16-18 For if the first fruit be holy, the lump is also holy: and if the root be holy, so are the branches...

so.

Exodus 15:23-25 And when they came to Marah, they could not drink of the waters of Marah, for they were bitter...

2 Kings 2:19-22 And the men of the city said to Elisha, Behold, I pray you, the situation of this city is pleasant, as my lord sees...

Ezekiel 47:8-11 Then said he to me, These waters issue out toward the east country, and go down into the desert, and go into the sea...